


Drowned in Rye, Drunk on Sadness

by SilverShortyyy



Category: Carol (2015), The Price of Salt - Patricia Highsmith
Genre: Angst, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 09:57:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14892458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverShortyyy/pseuds/SilverShortyyy
Summary: Carol gets nightmares. But not really; they bring no fear, no anxiety. Just heartache.“Rye depresses you.” She drinks rye anyway, because at least that way she won’t make it to the phone.Carol doesn’t revel in the next time Therese calls her. It’s painful; still, she doesn’t say a word. She wishes she could, though.‘I miss you, my angel. I miss you so very much.’





	Drowned in Rye, Drunk on Sadness

What would one call a nightmare? A dream in which one is awakened into shock and terror? A fantasy wherein one finds themselves running at cliffside to get away from death? A fiction made in sleep like a dystopia, plunged in anguish, despair, and hopelessness?

What _is_ a nightmare? Carol wonders.

Because if a nightmare is what the dream is made of, and not the reaction that the dream elicits, then could she call these nightly occurrences nightmares? Could she call these flashes of vividness, these endless projections of celluloid, nightmares? Could she, when it is not so much the dream that satisfies the conditions, but the daily reaction she has upon waking up?

But, she thinks, she often wakes up these days not to shock and terror, but to a heavy, aching void where she thinks her heart is supposed to be.

Sometimes she wishes she didn't even wake up. But no, she can’t give in to that. Not now.

Not yet.

She pushes those thoughts aside. No. No, no, no. No. She won’t let herself go there.

And then, she thinks, if nightmares are so defined by what the series of scenes contain, then couldn’t these past few days be considered a nightmare in themselves? Hardly fictional, yes, but isn’t this what a nightmare is so often described to be? A picture of terror, of anguish, of no end in sight. One being left with only prayer, a desperate wish whispered into the silence of the night, for the chase to end, for the cage to be unlocked, for the chains to be unshackled.

But then sometimes the night turns against people, and whispers their desperate wishes to waiting ears, betraying what people assume about the night being a secret-keeper beyond dusk and before dawn.

_‘I say I love you always, the person you are and the person you will become. I would say it in a court if it would mean anything to those people or possibly change anything, because those are not the words I am afraid of.’_

Her dreams aren’t the secret of the night, though, let alone a weapon of the dawn. No, Carol’s dreams—or nightmares, if one would choose to define a nightmare by the reactions it elicits—are nothing but her own, her own weapon for herself or her own salvation; her dreams are whatever she chooses them to be.

Or whatever the day chooses it to be for her, as these days she’s noticed that she’s formed a habit of giving up control of the day to whoever controls the winds and the skies and the seas, to whoever brought her to that toy store and whoever dangled such a temptation in front of her, just always out of her reach, a temptation of a life she knows is impossible, yet she chased after it, a person crazed for something she never knew she needed until she saw it standing right in front of her.

“Therese.” Carol says, eyes downcast, a glass of rye dangling from her hand. “Therese Belivet.”

One would wonder how a name could taste sweeter than even the sweetest cake on earth, and yet so bitter that even the most bitter alcohol or coffee cannot even dream to compete.

Therese would hate her by now. Maybe would have even gotten over her.

Carol takes a gulp of rye.

_Such an easy smile on her face, such bliss, such happiness. Carol wondered if she had really given Therese that. Could she? Had she? Or was it the picture of them Therese had in her head, two runaway souls that could stay westbound for eternity, free from society and society’s hundred odd demands?_

_Oh, Carol thought. Therese was happy and it wasn’t because of illusions or play pretend. Or was she?_

_Carol couldn’t shoo the thoughts away._

_She watched Therese flit around the room, with an air of mingled contentment and the slightest hint of—worry?—but anything else was drowned out, the upbeat rhythm from the phonograph muting out the worries the world was trying to pelt through their door._

_Carol wondered how close the world was to getting their hands around Therese’s neck, how much effort Therese must be putting to keep those greedy hands at bay._

_“What a rotten time I give you, don’t I?”_

_“Oh, Carol—“_

_And if Carol did not give rotten enough time, she turned it even sourer at every passing thought. Therese’s look of helplessness all but reassured her of that._

_She did not deserve such a young soul, such a giving soul. Therese would find someone else, someone better, someone who wouldn’t come with legal troubles and a daughter, and a somewhat bitter ex-husband, someone who could give Therese all their time and Carol could see it, her angel, happy, all the way in California or Maine or Canada or who the hell knows, not with her, Carol, but with someone else._

_It filled Carol with a disgusting spread of jealousy._

_‘Therese is mine.’ Carol thought, and she didn’t even question if she was in any place to think that at all._

_The window showed Carol the sky, and how beautiful the sky was, how free from the demands of the land, only ever getting dragged into land business when the land kindly asked on rare occasions._

_Freedom. Freedom, escape._

_“And why didn’t we go to Europe in the first place? Switzerland.” The Swiss Alps seemed to taunt her. Too far, too far. Too dangerous of a getaway, to intoxicating of an escape. “Or fly out here at least.”_

_“I wouldn’t have liked that at all.” Carol’s eyes find Therese’s, and damn those hazel irises for making all her bad thoughts go away, for chasing all the demons away, for driving off and sending all the threats packing, all the world that tried to break them apart off somewhere else where they couldn’t reach neither Carol nor Therese._

_Carol thought her lips might’ve trembled. Carol thought she might’ve said ‘I love you’ again._

_“It’s that last rye you got downstairs,” Therese said. “Rye depresses you.”_

_“Does it?” Leave it to Therese to notice even the things Carol is oblivious to about herself._

_“Worse than brandy.”_

_Carol smiled. Only slightly, maybe, but smiled just enough._

_How, in all her life, did she get this lucky?_

_“I’m going to take you to the nicest place I know this side of Sun Valley.”_

_“What’s the matter with Sun Valley?”_

_“Sun Valley just isn’t the place.” Indulging Therese seemed to be her favorite pastime now. Then again, how else was she to live her life? How else could she say three words she knew she couldn’t overuse, for fear of those words losing their meaning? “This place is near Colorado Springs.”_

Carol’s eyes drift to the phone. Just a few steps. Just a few movements of her muscles, just a few clicks of her shoes—

It rings. Her glass of rye suddenly doesn’t seem enough to fill the emptiness.

She sets the glass down and walks. Eyes trained on the phone. She picks it up.

“Hello?” Carol thinks she hears Therese, soft, gentle Therese, a careful voice with an edge of stubbornness that wedged itself into her heart; it’s Abby.

“Hello? Abby?” Carol tries not to laugh. Funny she’d think Therese would call. Therese would more likely go off in the opposite direction than call her. “How are you on such a lovely day?”

“Good enough. You?”

“Delightful.” Carol lights a cigarette and lets the smoke run itself down to her lungs. “Though obviously better than when I first got here.”

Carol looks off past the glass of the distant window. More rye should do the trick, to keep her from this threshold of will she, won’t she.

“I want to call her, Abby.”

“We both know you shouldn’t.”

Because the whole fiasco would just happen all over again, and someone will get hurt again and no one will be left unscathed.

She’ll have no excuse then, no excuse to say she didn’t use Therese for her own.

Didn’t use Therese like a drug to keep her sane.

“If you really love her,” Abby says, and Carol knows what Abby is about to say, but words don’t seem to hold for too long unless they’re repeated, the strokes of the letters embedding into her memory but the understanding of the concept always floating off a little out of reach. “Get back to her when you can stand on your own two feet.”

Ironic how Carol is actually standing on her own two feet while on the telephone.

“I know.”

“Then don’t call her, Carol.”

When the call ends, Carol walks over to her table and pours herself another glass of rye.

At least, she thinks, if she depresses herself just enough, she won’t even have the heart to look at the phone and think of calling Therese.

Instead, she’ll be thinking of all the ways she messed up, all the ways she hurt Therese and all the reasons why she shouldn’t try to call at all.

_“Rye depresses you.”_

_No, darling._ Carol thinks. _It simply lets me drown in thoughts I’ve pushed away for too long._

Carol wonders if Therese would still love her after everything. Carol wonders, and she tells herself that’s impossible, but it was impossible to meet someone from across the counter of a toy store then have them be the center of one’s life a few months later, but here they are, having broken every possibility and practically transcended reality. Could Carol believe in their love, believe that there’ll be something left to salvage when Carol’s finally better off?

Carol imagines Therese somewhere, miles and miles away from her, sleeping in an empty bed and hating Carol for all the lies, all the treachery. She deserves it from Therese, Carol thinks, as she downs another glass of rye.

_The phone rings._

_Late, late at night._

_This morning, Abby had called._

_She picks it up._

_A dial tone._

_A familiar breath on the other end of the line._

_“Hello?”_

_She wants to speak. Wants to scream. I love you. I love you and I always will. I want to be there with you. I want you to be here with me. And nothing will keep us apart, never again, never, from this moment on._

_But she doesn’t. She shouldn’t. She can’t._

_She finds it hard to hang up._

_She’d cleared off her red nail polish. It reminded her too much of hazel eyes and shy pink lips._

_I miss you._

_She tries again, tries to hang up._

_I miss you._

_She tries, and she finally gets it, presses down on the button and hangs up, hangs up before any more damage is done._

_‘I miss you, my angel. I miss you so very much.’_

When Carol wakes up the next morning, she pretends the tears on her cheeks is spilled rye that missed her lips.

**Author's Note:**

> The scene where Therese tells Carol that rye depresses her (Carol) is from The Price of Salt.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed my take on that scene, as well as the rest of the fic! Much love!


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